


Naruto And Katsuo Are Friends

by JumpingJackFlash



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Transmigration, and the ability to budget, but it might as well be, he doesn't have foreknowlege of the plot, modern character reincarnated into naruto verse, naruto isn't a work of fiction in his verse, not really a, only at the beginning though, this will make a disproportionate difference, what he has is dad instincts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27662752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JumpingJackFlash/pseuds/JumpingJackFlash
Summary: One of the other boys at the orphanage remembers just enough of a past life to see Naruto as a cute kid in need of looking after. Growing up with a brother figure watching his back, Naruto isn't a desperate, love-starved, illiterate weapon ready-made for authority to wield. Some people in Konoha aren't very happy about that...Others, though... well, it might just save their lives.
Relationships: Uzumaki Naruto & Original Character(s)
Comments: 102
Kudos: 507





	1. Naruto And Katsuo Eat Some Worms

**Author's Note:**

> when i say 'not a self insert but it might as well be', what i mean is that henry isn't me, and katsuo isn't henry. but henry has my Dad Nature and a lot of my personality. the rest of his character is taken from other people i know, mostly my brother and my dad. katsuo's memories of henry's life are fuzzy; he's not going to be dragging the elemental nations into the space age or anything. mainly, i just feel the urge to feed naruto and block hiruzen, and this fic is my way of doing it. :D
> 
> will be going up a lot slower than 'things to do' because i actually care about the plot somewhat.

  
A thing they don’t tell you about reincarnation is, there’s just not room for an adult mind in a baby’s brain. Whatever mystical business kept my personality and memories intact after I died, it wasn’t up to the task of shoving all that into an infant’s skull, and that’s probably a good thing.

By the time I had enough neurons to start digging through foggy memories of being a materials engineer named Henry, I was quite thoroughly an orphaned toddler named Hashimoto Katsuo. I was more aware of my surroundings than a normal toddler, probably. Definitely had more context and perspective. The baby brain was pretty smart for being a baby brain, too, so language and hand-eye coordination came pretty quickly. But I wasn’t Henry trapped in Katsuo’s body. I was Katsuo paging through Henry’s life like a torn and water-damaged book.

Henry was a very ordinary person. There was nothing about him that said, ‘Here is a person who should be sent to an alternate universe where everyone speaks Japanese and does magic, so that he may heroically fix shit or whatever.’ There was no reason I should remember him at all. A glitch in the afterlife system. A trickster god fucking around. Who knows? Maybe it happens to a lot of people but they don’t talk about it.

Of what comes after death, I had nothing. No black void or loving light, no welcoming relatives or judging angels. Nor did I have my birth, or the death of my parents. I was only a few months old when catastrophe struck the ‘village’ where we lived. A catastrophe called ‘The Kyuubi’. Adults would mention ‘When The Kyuubi Attacked’ in a way that had me thinking ‘Fire Nation’ (which was funny because we were the Fire Nation, sorta), but it wasn’t an invading army, it was a monster. 

There were monsters here. There were people with magical powers, and I could feel their magic when they were near me, like an itch in my brain. I could feel that same magic in my body, surging around like electrons in a circuit. Being Henry had not prepared me for this.

But Henry’s personality gave me exactly the edge I needed to survive. I was born with the most powerful ability of them all: the ability to roll with it. Whatever governs reincarnation had plunked me down at the starting line of a Tragic Backstory, but I was going to have a good life anyway, dammit. I was going to find my bliss. I was going to be _happy_ , and no magical bullshit was going to stop me.

The first step, I decided, once I had developed the ability to decide things, was to befriend the local scapegoat.

===

We were all world class woobies, but this kid? This kid had it _rough_. 

For the first couple-three years we all thought his name was Monster. _He_ thought his name was Monster. But he couldn’t say ‘Bakemono’, so he referred to himself as Mono. He had marks on his face like whiskers, and lemon yellow hair, and he somehow managed to be hyperactive and loud on even less food than the rest of us got.

I don’t think the orphanage matron was an evil woman. The village wasn’t prepared to deal with fifty-some orphans in one night, and Tsubasa-okaasan stepped up to take a hit for the team. But man, did she not let us forget it. The non-combat shinobi who had gotten so many children into the evacuation shelters before the Kyuubi really got going were true heroes of the village, but to hear Tsubasa talk, they’d pretty much done it out of spite so she’d never get a full night’s sleep again in her life. I mean, you gotta forgive some of what she put us through just because she was so catastrophically sleep-deprived every single day.

It was not a job anyone would be capable of doing alone, but she couldn’t get enough volunteers to really pick up all the slack. There wasn’t money for hiring anyone. There wasn’t really enough money to keep us all alive, frankly; the village had earmarked funds, but they hadn’t budgeted for surprises or emergencies, so the orphanage operated in the red at all times, and relied on food donations and make-do and the labor of the older children.

All Tsubasa-okaasan had time to do, most days, was the absolute most basic maintenance needed to keep us from straight up dying of neglect. We ate the blandest food that could be made in big batches, and if we spilled or another kid stole our share, we were out of luck, because she was busy elsewhere. Babies sat in their dirty diapers for hours sometimes before she got around to changing them; we all had horrible rashes. If somebody got sick, they got broth and extra blankets and an aspirin. She didn’t have time to sit by their bedside, or money for a doctor. Nobody went to the hospital until it was maybe too late. Come to think of it, I’m not sure anyone who went to the hospital came back.

The ones with weak immune systems or allergies or anything that required special care mostly died while I was still trapped in baby-brain. One toddler got dropped on her head by a volunteer. A few wandered off, or that’s what Tsubasa said, maybe they were kidnapped, who would know? Several older kids, sick of being used as unpaid labor to take care of the babies, left to find work that, while still exploitative, probably smelled better and involved less screaming. And a lucky, lucky few managed to contact relatives elsewhere, and go to live in a real home with people who would notice if they broke their collarbone.

Oh yeah; I broke my collarbone. Fell off the kitchen counter when I was climbing to get the crackers out of the top shelf. Went around with my wrist tucked in my half-buttoned shirt for a few weeks, Tsubasa-okaasan never even asked. I got those goddamn crackers, though. I shared them with Mono. I didn’t give any to anyone else, because fuck ‘em.

I mean, they were kids. Of _course_ they picked up on the way Tsubasa-okaasan blamed Mono for everything that went wrong. It wasn’t their fault. But my god they sure were a bunch of little assholes.

That’s the thing Tsubasa did that I couldn’t forgive: she taught the children to hate Mono. She so rarely focused on us as individuals, we were all so desperate to be seen, that when she focused on this innocent blue-eyed dandelion of a kid, we were jealous of the attention even though it was hatred. Even I felt the pull of it. If I didn’t have enough Henry in me to see him as a sweet baby to be protected, I probably would’ve been a dick to him too.

Honestly, enough sob story. Me and Mono, we had the will to not only survive, but have _fun_. The lack of supervision let us do pretty much whatever we wanted as soon as we could walk. We both had enough of the surging magic juice in our magic-juice circuits to walk off the occasional concussion or sprain; to survive on less food, less sleep; to not get sick even when we were constantly filthy. If we hadn’t had each other, and if I hadn’t had Henry to draw on, and if Mono hadn’t had the dark furnace that sometimes flared up in him when he was particularly mistreated, we maybe wouldn’t have made it. I didn’t befriend Mono with that in mind, though. I just saw that Tsubasa-okaasan was mean to him even though he was a cheery little cutie pie, so I toddled over and gave him half a blue crayon, and we were inseperable ever after. It got me included in the shunning, but whatever. 

Friendship is simple when you’re little. You have one friend and they’re _everything_. As soon as we learned about siblings (Mono learned they were a thing, and I learned the words for them), we started calling each other nii-chan. People would inform us helpfully that nii-chan is your _older_ brother, and only _one_ of us could be the big brother; we would stick our tongues out and go “Beeeeh!” and run away. We didn’t need no stinkin’ rules.

We were both real chatterboxes; I was articulate to a degree that adults found creepy, and Mono was just about unintelligible, but we understood each other well enough to spend every waking moment talking. We both liked bugs and animals, disliked shoes, were fast learners when it came to physical skills, and had a real talent for entertaining ourselves without toys or books or television.

At age four, we started getting lessons in basic reading and math three mornings a week, but the volunteer who taught us was too old and much too sweet to discipline a bunch of rowdy little maniacs with personality disorders. Some of those orphans were legit feral, I kid you not. So I pretty much taught myself to read Japanese by borrowing the baby books she brought in, and then I’d teach it to Mono, since he was way too ADHD to learn in a crowd. It was when we were practicing writing our names that we finally found out his wasn’t Monster. The nice old lady asked if Mono was short for something, and we told her it was Bakemono (I volunteered loudly that Katsuo was short for Katsuoboshi, because my brain was four and my mouth frequently just went off), upon which she got a very stormy look on her face and went to find Tsubasa-okaasan.

(It maybe should have been obvious to me all along. Who would name their kid Monster? But we had kids in there named Iron and Maple and I thought I was named after shaved smoked fish, so why not Monster?)

After our customary lunch of rice and pickles, Tsubasa-okaasan took Mono by the arm (she always gripped too hard) and dragged him aside to tell him his name was Uzumaki Naruto, and to stop telling people it was Bakemono. She made it sound like he’d done it to make her look bad. He was just happy to know he had a family name, though. It might’ve been the first time he realized he’d had parents just like the rest of us. He went around repeating “Uzumaki Naruto!” to himself for quite a while after that.

(Yeah, he was told to stop calling himself Monster and start calling himself Spiral Whirlpool. People here were _super_ good at names.)

“Monsters are cool, though,” I told him. “You sure you don’t still want to be Mono?”

His button nose wrinkled. “A monster killed all the parents.”

“Yeah, but that was a giant fox monster. You’re like… a little lion monster.” I tried to think if any of the baby books had cute monsters in them, but couldn’t bring any to mind, so I turned to mythology. “You’re a funny little yokai like a kappa.”

“ _You’re_ a kappa. You like cucumbers and swimming.”

“Yeah, I’m probably a kappa,” I agreed. We weren’t supposed to swim in the river but nobody ever tried to stop us. “We’re the good kind of monsters. I’m a kappa and —”

“And I’m a Naruto,” he concluded proudly.

I thought about his logic, and shrugged. “Works for me.”

“Besides, our names rhyme now. Katsuo and Naruto!”

“They rhymed before.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Yuh-huh. Mono rhymes with Katsuo.”

“It does not!”

There was a scuffle. Since no one bothered to separate kids even when they were fighting for real, let alone just having a friendly little donnybrook, we were left to chase each other all over the building and off the grounds. We tackled each other down the hill to the village, found some sticks and had a swordfight, pinballed through the market and got yelled at, and finally ran out of steam somewhere on the other edge of town, in a field that looked like it’d been used for explosives testing.

By that time we were bored of fighting and chasing, so we decided to look for bugs in the dug-up dirt holes. Naruto dared me to eat a worm, and I told him it was super delicious, so he ate one, and discovered it was not. We concluded that we were pretty hungry. We wandered along the street where the food carts were, trying to beg some food from the people who were eating; most of them ignored us, and some made mean faces or yelled at Naruto, but some nice Academy girls gave us a stick of dango to share, and we got almost a whole order of tempura vegetables because a shinobi got called away and left it on a bench. No dipping sauce, though.

This gave us the energy to continue our conquest of the village. I suggested we catch crayfish by the river. I had only the foggiest recollection of how to find them, and none at all of whether they’d be living the same kind of places in this climate, but it was a good excuse to get muddy and then go swimming, which was the closest thing we got to a bath most of the time. I did try to take care of Mono — Naruto — as much as my baby brain could manage. Scrounging in the market got us protein and vitamins we weren’t getting at home. If we didn’t run off and get in trouble, we’d get no exercise at all; the ‘good’ kids at the orphanage, the ones who stayed in and did mending, were weak-boned and stir-crazy and probably had severe vitamin D deficiency. Napping in the tall grass was more restful than the crowded and smelly futons we shared at night. We got ticks, though.

At long last, well after dark, we wandered back home, only to find the place locked up tight. Naruto kicked the door and yelled, but I didn’t bother, because we knew perfectly well Tsubasa-okaasan wasn’t going to open up. This had happened before. We could just bed down in the yard somewhere…

A distant grumble of thunder told us that wasn’t going to be very comfortable tonight.


	2. Ramen Toppings And Two Jiisans

I took Naruto’s hand and tugged him back toward town. He was full of ideas for awesome places we could hole up, and I was happy to discuss the pros and cons of each. We were _probably_ not going to catch some bandits on the road and beat them up and take their hideout and make it our new clubhouse just for us, no mean kids allowed, but it was fun to talk about what features we would install. I wanted a swimming pool, obviously. With a water slide.

“If we had a water slide we wouldn’t mind being wet,” Naruto agreed sagely, because the rain was starting by that point.

“And a forge,” I put in. My Henry memories supplied a mental image of a big computerized cutting table, actually, but even if I could remember the word for it, I was pretty sure they didn’t have those in magic ninja world. “To make things out of metal.”

“Wouldn’t the swords get rusty?”

“Huh?”

“The swords! That you forge in the forge!” He made a pounding-with-hammer gesture with the hand I wasn’t holding.

“It’s not in the swimming pool, you meatball, why would I put the forge in the swimming pool?” Then we both paused, and chorused wistfully together, “Meatbaaaaaalls…”

We sort of ran out of steam for a little bit. We were really drenched, the rain had turned cold, we were hungry, we were sleepy, and we didn’t have any practical ideas for how to get warm or dry. We were wilting like lettuce. It was looking like we were going to spend the night huddling and shivering under a store awning like sad orphans, and while we might have _been_ , in fact, sad orphans, I wasn’t going to let the Tragic Backstory get such perfect flashback fodder on my watch.

“Hey, that place is still open,” I suggested, pointing to a food stall with light spilling out under the awning. “Maybe they’ll let us warm up in there.”

“Hey, yeah!” Nobody could say Naruto didn’t keep a positive outlook. He perked right up, and shortly he was the one dragging me along instead of vice-versa.

The smell coming out of that food stall was heavenly. Even better was the smile the cook gave us when he leaned over the counter to see who’d yelled, “Hi, Pops!” It was a smile that didn’t even acknowlege the animosity so many villagers had toward Naruto. This guy wasn’t conquering his hatred, he straight up didn’t have any in him.

“You’re out late, gentlemen,” he commented cheerfully.

“Tsubasa-obaasan locks the doors at bedtime,” I explained sheepishly, “and it’s too wet to sleep in the yard. Can we warm up in here?”

“Have a seat, I’ll get you some towels.”

By the time we’d succeeded in boosting each other onto stools, he was back with a pair of clean dish towels, which he dropped on our heads. “Now, what flavors of ramen do you like?”

“Ramen?” Naruto echoed. “We never had that at the orphanage. It smells good, though!”

“What, never?” The cook reared back in exaggerated surprise. “Well, that just means you get to try it for the first time.”

“We don’t have any money,” I felt obliged to say, though of course he had to know that.

“Ah, but there’s free meal vouchers for orphans, didn’t you know?” He winked at me, spotting my skepticism, and I didn’t call him on it. Naruto gave a joyful whoop and spun his seat around.

“I’m Katsuo. And this is Naruto.” I reached out to grab his elbow as he teetered, dizzy from his little spin. “It’s nice to meet you, mister.”

“My name is Teuchi, and you boys are in for a treat. Hmm, Naruto and Katsuo. That gives me an idea.”

We dried off and played with chopsticks while he assembled a couple of bowls. He slid them in front of us with a smile. “Let’s try miso ramen first. With naruto —“ he gave us each a couple of swirly fishcakes — “and katsuo!” — a thick slice of grilled tuna. 

We weren’t even quite five years old yet; we could be forgiven, I think, for garbling out an ‘itadakimasu’ while digging right in, rather than thanking him properly. The way he watched us, though, our appreciation of the food was the best thanks. I was able to slow down after a while and make some comments like “Wow!” and “So yummy!” in between bites. Naruto just plowed through until he was slurping the last drops of broth. I gave him one of my whirly fishcakes, which I had saved for just such an eventuality. “We’re both named after ramen toppings, nii-chan,” I said wonderingly. “It’s _fate_.” And he nodded frantically as he chewed.

“Well, that was certainly a big hit,” Teuchi laughed. “Are you full already, or do you want to try another flavor?”

Obviously we wanted to try all the flavors, so Teuchi declared that tonkotsu was next. As he dished it up, I mused, “I thought katsuo was the shavey stuff.”

“That’s katsuoboshi,” Teuchi said. “What I gave you just now was fresh katsuo.”

I hadn’t realized there was a particular fish they made the condiment out of. “So I’m named after a fish?”

He laughed. “Well, it’s a pretty good fish! But it depends on how you write it.”

I dug a crayon stub out of my pocket and laboriously printed it out on the chopstick wrapper: ka, tsu, o. When he came back with the food, I handed it to him like a business card. He accepted it solemnly.

“Ah, of course, hiragana only tells us the sounds, doesn’t it? But once you learn your kanji, you can spell your name in different ways to give it different meanings. I think the usual way is like this…” And while we ate our second bowls, these with barbecue pork and spinach, he showed me different ways to write Katsuo, the one that meant the fish and the ones that meant things like ‘victorious husband’. I rejected that one, but I quite liked the one whose kanji meant ‘winner’ and ‘alive’, so I had him draw that for me on the back of an old reciept in ballpoint and tucked it carefully in my pocket to study later. My name could mean a ramen topping _and_ ‘I win at life’.

“Now show me how many ways to write Naruto!” said that worthy.

There was only one way, though, since the ramen topping was whirlpool-roll, and the kanji were too complicated for our stubby little hands. Teuchi assured us it was fine to use hiragana. We were only just learning, after all. Now, how did we like the tonkotsu, and were we ready to try shoyu flavor? We crowed our enthusiastic assent. I was sure I couldn’t have finished even one bowl this size at this age in my old life, but my belly seemed to be using everything up as soon as I ate it, and instead of feeling full I was feeling more and more alive. From the way Naruto was reviving, he felt the same way.

As Teuchi was putting down bowls of dark broth with soft-boiled egg and seaweed, a new customer ducked beneath the awning, an old man in a wide hat. Teuchi’s eyes sharpened, and he began a motion that was probably a bow, but the old man gave the slightest headshake and he stopped.

“I’m surprised to see you open this late,” Hat Guy said jovially. “Do you think you could serve one more?”

“Of course, customer-san! What’ll it be?”

Hat Guy crinkled his eyes at us in a fond way that we basically never saw directed at us. “What do you recommend?” he asked. He directed it more at Naruto than at me, even though Naruto was on the other side of me.

Naruto looked up with noodles hanging out of his mouth, unsure how to proceed. I jumped in to help: “We only ever had ramen for the first time just now, so we don’t know what’s best yet, but so far the tonkotsu was the most delicious thing I ever ate in my life!”

Naruto nodded and made agree noises until he swallowed, then added, “This one is really good too though!”

“They’re all super good,” I concluded. “And Teuchi-jiisan is _really_ nice.”

“Yeah!” Naruto laughed, radiating joy like a miniature sun. “You’re the best, jiisan!”

Weirdly, the new customer looked kind of disappointed when Naruto said jiisan, but not when I did. Maybe I misinterpreted, though. It might’ve been sympathy. He ordered tonkotsu with extra pork and chatted with Teuchi about the weather while he made it. 

Once he’d started in on his bowl, he said, “Now, what are you boys doing out so late?” and once again he directed it across me at Naruto. Once again, Naruto had his mouth full, so I was the one who explained about getting locked out. He got kind of a scary look on his face when he heard we’d come to town looking for somewhere to get out of the rain.

“You mean to tell me,” he said slowly, “that the matron of the orphanage locks you outside at night?”

Naruto’s arm bumped mine as he leaned a bit closer for moral support. “Only if we’re late! We were pretty late.”

I scoffed. “We were like half an hour late.”

“Anyway, it wasn’t raining yet.”

“It was _obviously_ gonna rain.”

“Why are you mad, nii-chan? If we didn’t get locked out, we wouldn’t a met Teuchi-jiisan and got to try ramen!”

I tilted my head, then shrugged. “Yeah. True.”

Teuchi, leaning his crossed arms on the counter, said, “I thought _he_ was nii-chan —“ but we both interrupted him with our synchronized ‘beeeh’ attack (minus the running away) and he gave up with a laugh.

“We’re the same age, so we decided to both be the big brother,” Naruto explained. (I was actually a month older, but Naruto always got his months mixed up anyway, and I never pressed the issue.)

Hat Guy studied us. “You don’t look very much like twins.”

I frowned at him, trying to figure out what this vibe was that I kept picking up from him. It was like he was trying to get close to Naruto and I was in the way, or something. I resolved not to let Naruto be alone with him under any circumstances. “Obviously we’re not,” I said slowly, watching him for reactions. I didn’t really know what I looked like, since I only ever saw my reflection in shop windows and puddles and never stopped to study it, but I knew I had brown hair and my eyes were a duller color than Naruto’s, a darker blue or a gray maybe. Only an idiot would think we were twins. “But we can be brothers if we want, so there.”

“Oh, is that how it works?” he chuckled.

“That’s how it works.”

He burst out laughing, followed by Teuchi, and Naruto joined in happily. I gave in and let myself laugh too. Maybe he wasn’t creepy, just a little awkward. But once we all wound down, he put my guard up again by saying, “Well, since Teuchi can’t stay open all night, I suppose you’ll just have to come stay with me.”

Naruto’s eyes went round. “Really? You’d really let us stay at your place, Jiisan?”

I, on the other hand, was Not Having It. “Hang on, nii-chan. For all we know he’s just trying to lure us back to his murder basement.”

“No way he has a murder basement. He’s nice!”

“For _now_ , but…”

Hat Guy looked to be holding in a laugh. Teuchi shook his head. “He’s the Hokage of this village, boys. Don’t you recognize him from the mountain?”

Naruto gave a loud “Whaaaat?” while I squinted, trying to compare. Hat Guy took his hat off to help us out. Oh. Yeah. Now I could see it. The Hokage probably didn’t have a murder basement. I bobbed a little bow. “Sorry, uh… so it’s just cuz you’re looking out for the village, then? Sorry, I just, you know, kids disappear sometimes, and Naruto-nii trusts people too much, and a lot of people are mean to him for no reason.” I gave him the squinty-eyes for a moment more, then sighed. “Besides, if the Ninja Mayor wanted to gank kids, he wouldn’t need to fool them into sleeping over.”

When he ruffled my hair, I twitched and froze in surprise, not used to that kind of contact. Now I was getting the same fond crinkle-eyes Naruto got. “Both the big brother, eh? I like that. You keep on looking out for each other.”

“We will, sir,” I said, while Naruto said, “Believe it!”

“Now, I know you’ve only had three bowls apiece, but it’s late and I think we’d all like to go to bed.”

Naruto and I tried to help each other get down off the tall stools and ended up in a heap on the floor. Hat Jiisan Hokage helped us up and did a little check-for-injuries that probably would have alarmed us both if it weren’t something I did to Naruto several times a day. We were definitely not used to adults doing it. Then he let out a pulse of magic-current somehow. He did _not_ miss the way it made me twitch. Ominous? Within seconds, two figures in white body armor and animal masks appeared kneeling at his feet. ANBU. Yikes.

“Hound, Badger, take these children to my residence and get them situated. I’ll be along shortly. Gently, please!” he admonished as they grabbed for us. “They’re not accustomed to shunshin, I would expect.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama,” the one in the dog mask said, and scooped Naruto up much more nicely than Tsubasa-okaasan ever had. The other one, who had a bit of squish under the stiff padded vest and was probably a woman, collected me briskly but not unkindly. And then —

_Whoosh!_

My startled yelps followed Naruto’s joyful whooping across the rooftops. We probably woke up half the village.

.

We slept in a fancy guest room in too-big yukatas, both curled into one corner of one bed even though there were two in the room, and woke to silence and sunlight. Our clothes were gone, but the contents of our pockets had been piled on a fancy lacquer tray as if the snail shells and shiny pebbles and broken crayons were some noble’s jewelry.

With a shared look, we silently agreed to cause no havoc here. This place was terrifyingly nice, and we didn’t know what to do with this kind of luck. But not exploring wasn’t an option.

Such a large building, so empty, was a little bit creepy. I could vaguely feel that there were people around, but at some distance, maybe outside. We wandered curving hallways, peeked into empty but museum-pristine rooms. The Henry part of me recognized that this was some sort of official residence, maybe diplomatic quarters, and wondered if stashing us here was Hat Jiisan’s way of keeping anyone from knowing he had us. I remembered his odd focus on Naruto. The point at which he acknowleged me was when I showed I was protective of Naruto. My value to the Hokage was due to my value to Naruto. So what was Naruto’s value? Why leave him in the orphanage and then suddenly take an interest? Well, I could think about it later. Right now our stomachs were growling and we didn’t have any pockets to collect our stuff.

Naruto lifted his head and sniffed. “Something smells good,” he whispered. I took his hand and gestured for him to lead on; his nose was much better than mine. 

When we stepped into the kitchen and found Hound making us breakfast, I wasn’t surprised. I’d sensed the man just before I saw him. And that wasn’t all, I realized. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You hang around the orphanage but you never come in,” I accused.

He didn’t reply, but studied me from behind his mask for a long moment. Then he turned away to start dishing up omurice.

“Omurice!” Naruto cried, as if it was a long-lost friend he’d never thought to see again. I reminded myself that I was here in this life to have fun and be a friend, not get all suspicious and analytical. Besides. _Omurice_.

Hound vanished while we ate. At some point I looked up from my plate to find that our clothes, folded and clean and mended, were on the table. So Hound could be un-sense-able if he wanted to be, and I’d tipped him off. Oh well. He was clearly a secretive guy. Let him do his ANBU thing.

When we came back out from dressing and collecting our pocket debris, Hat Jiisan was there. He crinkled his eyes at us. “You look much better today! Did you sleep well?”

“Jiji!” Naruto rushed him and glomped his knees. The old man looked startled and delighted as he put his hand on Naruto’s hair. “We had omurice! The dog man made it! It was so good!”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the Hokage laughed.

“Hat Jiisan, did you have your ANBU mend our clothes?” I crossed my arms. “What’s so special about us?” (Damn baby brain. I was going to keep my suspicion to myself. Welp! Out of the bag now!)

He mirrored my suspicious look, but with a twinkle that said it was put-on. “You’re a very clever and observant young man, aren’t you, Hashimoto Katsuo?”

“I’m not a young man. I’m four. And you’re obvious.”

“If I hadn’t looked up your records, I’d suspect you were part Nara. Well, your mother was in T&I, and there are no fools in that department!”

Curiosity took over. Suspicion could wait. He wouldn’t tell us outright anyhow. “And my father?”

“Genin Corps, engineering. He was with a squad sent to shut down the electric plant during the attack, to prevent fires. They succeeded, too, despite being right in the Kyuubi’s path. Many lives were saved.” He reached out to palm my head as well, and lord help me, it felt so nice. “I don’t know precisely where your mother died. She was an active-duty jounin. She fought to protect everyone. That’s all I can tell you.”

I closed my eyes. Henry’s parents were a washed-out Polaroid of white-haired people standing next to a Winnebago, nothing more, and as Katsuo I’d never known anything of my parents but my surname. It was… good, to have the context. “Thank you, sir.”

Naruto turned his face up, hope lighting him like a fire. “And mine? Jiji, what about my parents? My name is Uzumaki Naruto,” he reminded, as if the old man didn’t know. 

“Both jounin,” the Hokage said kindly. “Very strong. They were among the ones who fought the Kyuubi. Without them, I’ve no doubt many more lives would have been lost. Your parents were heroes, Naruto.” His eyes were glossy, and I finally understood why he was so laser focused on Naruto. He felt he’d failed Naruto’s parents. I knew the Fourth was under that hat at the time, but I had no idea how things were arranged, maybe the Third had been helping direct things and gave the order to send them out. Gave the order to put them both on the front line, even though they had a brand new baby — god, Naruto must’ve been only a few days old, if the orphanage guessed his birthday as the day of the attack. His mother was probably still weakened from giving birth. But someone sent her to fight a monster. Yeah, I’d feel responsible too, if I were Hat Jiji.

Naruto started crying, so I had to go hug him. “We’re sons of heroes, nii-chan,” I told him, squeezing his middle as hard as my little arms could squeeze. “We’re gonna grow up real strong.”

“They didn’t throw me away,” Naruto babbled through his tears. “They didn’t, they, it’s not cuz I’m a monster. It’s not cuz of me.”

“Of course not,” Hat Jiisan soothed.

“No way, did you think that!?” I headbutted him lightly. “You know all the parents died from the Kyuubi! Why would yours be different?”

“I dunno,” he blubbered, clinging to me now instead of the Hokage. “Katsuo, everybody thinks I’m bad ‘cept you.” He trailed off. “And Ramen Jiisan, and Hat Jiisan.”

“I approve of Jiisans,” I decided.

“Yeah,” Naruto sniffled into my shirt.

The Hokage petted both our heads. “I have a surprise for you boys, if you’re ready to go. Do you have all your things?”

Naruto scrubbed at his nose with the back of his hand and nodded. I gave him a little noogie to cheer him up. Sure it sucked that we had to go back to the orphanage, but we knew about our parents now, and that was a big deal. Besides, being tiny pariahs in povertyland wouldn’t be as scary now that we knew there were a few people in the village that would go out of their way to help us if we were in trouble. Next broken bone, I was gonna hunt down Hound and make him ANBU it better.


	3. Domestic Blitz

We weren’t going back to the orphanage. Hat Jiji’s surprise for us… was an apartment.

It was small, and kind of shabby, but it was high up and had its own entrance, and a balcony with a great view of the town. We had the whole top… bit. I guess you could call it a penthouse if you wanted to be sly, but it was more like an afterthought. Still, the space and privacy were breathtaking. “This building is genin housing,” the Hokage explained a little apologetically as he unlocked it. “It might be a tad noisy at times, and the water pressure, I’m told, is unsatisfactory. But you’ll be very safe. There are three floors of young shinobi underneath you. No civilians will bother you.”

Naruto and I looked at each other. So the old man knew about the villagers’ nasty words and occasional thrown objects or casual kicks. Ninja were mostly just cold, not hostile. And surely they knew they’d be in trouble if they attacked kids.

As soon as the door was open, Naruto squirted through like a watermelon seed, and then spun around in the genkan going waaaah. He poked his head through each door in turn and went waaah some more. I grabbed him around the middle and choo-chooed him through the left-hand door so I could see too. He giggled, resisting for a moment and then careening off around the tiny kitchen, poking into cabinets. I tried opening the fridge. It had a pretty good seal, I had to brace my foot against a cabinet to get it open. The amount of food in there made my jaw drop.

“You’ll have to do your own shopping after this,” the old man cautioned. “But I’ll bring around money every month. Will that be satisfactory, gentlemen?”

“You’re the best, Jiji!” Naruto caroled.

“Why?” I demanded. “We can’t be the only orphans whose parents were heroes, sir.” Seriously, guy, tell Naruto you failed his parents, let him forgive you, you’ll feel better.

He hesitated. He smiled. “Once upon a time, a child was walking on the beach —“ And he proceeded to tell us the goddamn parable of the starfish, as if that was an answer. Well, Naruto ate it up, and I supposed I had to accept it was his choice to hang onto guilt if he wanted to. We weren’t going to reject his charity. I gave in with a deep sigh and hugged his knees in thanks.

“Just don’t forget the other starfish, Jiisan,” I told him. “Cuz that’s one ugly beach you just picked us off of.”

“Hmm,” was all he said, but it was thoughtful.

Once he’d gone, we explored the place from top to bottom in growing delight. Sure, there were cracks in the plaster, the bathroom windowsill was crooked so a draft came in around the window frame, the kitchen faucet leaked on the counter if you turned it on too high. But it was an actual for-real one-bed one-bath with a full kitchen. Henry hadn’t had that until after grad school. It was furnished, too, and there were even cute kiddie sheets on the bunk bed. Dogs on the lower bunk, teddy bears on the upper. I wondered if Hound had picked them out, or if Badger or another ANBU had done it while Hound was making omurice in his armor and mask like a terrifying nanny.

If I called him Scary Poppins, would he think I needed my head examined?

“Do you want top or bottom?” Naruto asked, then immediately added, “I want top!”

“Okay. I don’t care.” I suspected we’d end up doubling up half the time anyway. I opened a dresser drawer and laughed. “Naruto! Somebody noticed our favorite colors!”

He scrambled down off the top bunk, where he’d been investigating a bear-face pillow, and joined me in taking out all the clothes to look at them. I kept having to remind him to put the clothes on the bottom bunk instead of the floor, Naruto was so eager to discover every orange and red thing we now owned. My turquoise and blue things stayed folded, because even my baby brain had enough look-ahead to know I’d just have to fold them again. But I did unfold my t-shirts once Naruto discovered his all had things on them. A ramen bowl, a frog, a sun face, a lightning bolt. I got a dinosaur, an apple tree, and… a gray athletic tee, big enough to be a dress on me, that said in black stencil print, **Konoha Combat Engineers: When It Absolutely Positively Has To Be Destroyed Overnight.**

I read it to Naruto. “I think I know what I’m gonna be when I grow up.” I’d been low-key worried about the whole deal where having ninja power meant being a ninja, and ninjas do a lot of murder, and I did not want to do a lot of murder. But structural damage? That, I could get into.

“You can do it ‘ttebayo! And I’m gonna be… I’m gonna be Hokage!”

“Huh. You like Hat Jiji that much?”

“He protects everybody! And they all love him! If I’m Hokage, they’ll all look up and see my face on the mountain and _know_ I’m not a monster.”

I approved of people knowing Naruto’s worth. I nodded firmly. We high-fived. Pact sealed.

.

No one from the orphanage ever looked for us, as far as I could tell. We’d been locked out on a stormy night and they never saw us again. But maybe they heard rumors that we were okay, because we certainly didn’t stop running around town like tiny whooping monkeys. We just stopped begging for food and digging in trash. The money Jiji dropped off every month wasn’t extravagant, but it was enough, as long as we stuck to our budget.

Why he would think a couple of four-year-olds — turning five as autumn closed in — could plan a household budget, that was a bit of a mystery. Maybe he expected Hound to step in if we screwed it up too bad. I caught Hound’s energy hanging around a few times. It always vanished when I approached the window he was near, but I made sure to blow a big cross-eyed raspberry in that direction anyhow. Just to tease. I had nothing against him. He’d made us omurice once, after all, and mended our clothes. And whatever his reason for keeping an eye on us — probably Hokage’s orders, but hey, maybe a hobby too — it did make me feel more secure.

Civilians were still jerks to us. More when Naruto was out alone, so I tried not to let him be alone, but as we got used to sleeping in our own bunks we started feeling more okay with spending time on our own. We weren’t growing apart or anything; it was just more interesting to do our own thing and then meet up and share what we’d done, than to always be doing the same thing. The genin in the apartments below ours mostly just ignored us. There was the occasional curled lip, but also the occasional kindly-meant bit of advice concerning trash pickup or planned maintenance, so it balanced out. 

One boy, in his mid teens and philosophical about having taken the chuunin exam three times already, was chilly at first, but warmed up over a few weeks, and by the time the leaves turned he chatted with us like a normal person whenever he saw us on the stairs. He even brought us his extras when he baked too much. It wasn’t an excuse to mother us or anything, though I thought so at first; no, this guy stress baked, and he was a very stressed individual. Naruto on a sugar high was a thing to behold.

I was in charge of shopping and cooking, and also anything that involved reading or writing, since Naruto still found literacy a pretty steep slope. Naruto was in charge of cleaning, laundry, and the plants. We started accumulating plants the first week, with a sad wilty thing that Naruto found by a dumpster and felt sorry for; it perked right up when given a bit of water, and he was hooked.

My book collection started because of Naruto’s plant collection. Since he was rescuing plants people threw out, he often had no idea what they were. I drew a careful sketch of the leaves, the stem configuration, and so on, of our mystery plants, and went to the library. Sadly, the public library in a ninja village was kind of… ninja oriented? The botany stuff was mostly for poison purposes, and not accessible to me. So I took my masterpiece of scientific illustration to the Yamanaka Flower Shop, and there I made my first non-Naruto friend. Yamanaka Ino was awed by my plant-drawing prowess. She drew me several flowers with secret meanings and told me how they could be used to send messages. Her dad caught us drawing on the floor of the greenhouse, and after a bit of explanation, gave me a plant identification guide.

I went home and told Naruto his first acquisition was an Anthurium and he was probably overwatering it. He reacted as if I’d discovered the secret of life, the universe, and everything.

When I wasn’t with Naruto, civilians didn’t recognize me, and were generally perfectly decent to me. Ninja knew who I was but mostly didn’t let it bother them. Everyone liked sharing their knowlege with a transfixed baby nerd. I wasn’t putting it on; I genuinely did want to know. Anything they felt like geeking out on, I was there for it. And part of geeking out is sharing books. A lot of loans, but also a surprising number of outright gifts. On my birthday, I found a note on the fridge with an address, signed with a little dog face; the address was a bookstore, where I learned that a substantial chunk of store credit had been left for me. The Hokage, or Hound himself? Either way, it was bliss.

I salvaged a bookshelf for our bedroom, and when that filled up, another. I learned a lot of interesting things, and a few crucial ones, such as: the electric-feeling energy in us was chakra, and it was what let ninja do their ninja things. My ability to feel it made me a ‘sensor type’, which wasn’t at all common. Also, the name Uzumaki was associated with having an absolute crap-ton of chakra. Which explained why Naruto was such a floodlight when I was only a hundred-watt bulb. Unfortunately it was only a passing mention in a book about increasing your chakra capacity, so I couldn’t tell him anything else about his ancestry.

On Naruto’s birthday, a note appeared directing him to the Yamanaka shop. We went together. It was a bit of a farce at first, because Ino threw a bitty tantrum, and her dad seemed to think Naruto was going to flip out on her if he didn’t calm everything down pronto. But once we got all that sorted out, it was revealed that Ino’s problem wasn’t that Naruto was hated by the village, it was that I had a friend besides her. I left it to her dad to explain about having more than one friend. I just distracted her with helping Naruto find the coolest plants, ones he’d never heard of. Appealing to her expertise worked like a charm. Naruto went home with a miniature rose, some vegetable seeds, and as many pots and bags of dirt as we could carry. Which wasn’t many, of course. But that didn’t stop Naruto from making some grandiose plans for all the food we could grow on our balcony.

That night, we had a tiny party, just the two of us. We didn’t dare join the Kyuubi Festival — people were extra nasty to Naruto that night, and though he was sure we could ‘go in disguise like real ninja’, I tabled that for next year. I made kitsune udon and inarizushi in honor of the fox spirits. My attempt at a cake… well, I needed more practice. It tasted fine, but it was kind of deflated, and it fell apart when I took it out of the pan. I crumbled it up, mixed it with the frosting and cut fruit that were supposed to go on top, and called it pudding. We decided it was better this way and we should make ‘pudding’ more often. 

We watched the fireworks from our roof, each with an arm around the other’s shoulders, like real brothers.

.

The winter in Fire Country is short, wet, and quite balmy by the standards of Henry’s memory. He’d been from the American Great Lakes area. Somewhere in the Iron Range, with red basalt cliffs, rust-tinted streams, taconite piles like giant anthills on the lakeshore… Duluth maybe? I couldn’t remember things that hadn’t been visually striking or emotionally important, mostly, and he hadn’t cared much about his city. He’d cared about winter, though. Thanks to him I remembered chest-deep snowdrifts, the sound of trees cracking in the night as their sap froze solid, and the itchy itchy marvel known as chillblains. I also remembered skiing (and sprained ankles), skating, ice fishing, snowmobiling… huh, Henry had been kind of a snow jock. Henry had liked the winter. He’d been unironically, dorkily fond of Christmas Cheer. He’d taken his husband to a North Shore resort every New Year for their anniversary. (The crackling fire and brandy-spiked cocoa sounded nice, but anything else that occurred while watching icy waves crash on the shore was not my business and I would’ve appreciated Henry’s spirit leaving that out of my recall for another decade or so. Yeesh.) 

As Katsuo, I could admit the snow-and-fireplace vibe seemed appealing. But Fire Country did not have any of that on offer. Fire Country had a bit of sleet or frost sometimes, but mostly what it had was dreary, dreary drizzle.

And. No. Damn. Insulation.

Our apartment was very far from cozy the winter we were five. The bathroom window whistled. There was a drip in the corner of the kitchen. There was no heating whatsoever. Literally none. It wasn’t that the heat was inefficient, or that it wasn’t turned on — there was genuinely no method provided for making the place warmer.

I tried for a while to heat the kitchen by keeping a pot of broth on a slow simmer, and the bedroom with some jar candles I scrounged. If it helped at all, it wasn’t by enough to keep our breath from showing indoors. At least we could always warm up with a cup of broth, so there was that. The stress-baking genin on the second floor invited us in sometimes; he had a kotatsu, and slept under an electric blanket. I went shopping. I discovered we could afford neither of these items. 

“Right,” I said at last, one morning when we were balled up together on the top bunk under both blankets, trying to keep ourselves entertained, because it was sleeting out and too cold inside to even color at the table. “Okay. That’s it.”

“What’d I do?” Naruto said reflexively, but he wasn’t too worried. When I talked like that it usually just meant we’d let some chore slip too long.

“We’re gonna go talk to Hat Jiisan and make him buy us a heater.”

“Okay.”

Well, I didn’t know myself how easy or hard it would be to get in to see the Hokage, so I couldn’t expect Naruto to be daunted. Not a lot daunted him anyway. I braced myself for the chill and de-cocooned us. Naruto squeaked. We scrambled for our jackets (inadequate) and raincoats (the cheap nylon kind from the convenience store, hardly better than a plastic bag). Naruto spoke for us both: “This is gonna suuuuuck.”

Moving around warmed us up some, but it couldn’t keep up with the weather for long. By the time we reached the Administration Building, our teeth were chattering. No one stopped us from going in. One hurdle down. When we asked the way to Jiisan’s office, though, everyone told us we couldn’t go there, and refused to give us directions. One guy told us to leave, but he didn’t get up from his desk, so we ignored that. We guessed if we were Hokage we’d want to be up high, so we buzzed around looking for stairs on each floor. Obviously there couldn’t just be a single stairwell going all the way up. This was a ninja village.

At last we achieved the top floor. It was a lot quieter up there. I could find Jiisan’s chakra fairly easily when I looked. We stood outside the intimidating door, glanced at each other, shrugged. There were some other people in there too but I didn’t know them. Should we wait? Naruto raised a fist to knock.

“You don’t want to do that,” someone said behind us. We both squeaked and whirled around.

The jounin who’d appeared behind us was slim, tall, twentyish, with light gray hair and only one eye showing. He had his hands in his pockets. He stood in an easy slouch, as if he’d just happened to be passing by. A stranger to us, and maybe trouble — but then I pulled my awareness from the office into the hall, and relaxed.

“Why not, Jounin-san?” I smiled. At the same time, Naruto shouted, “We gots to see Jiji! We need a heater! Our ‘partment’s _freezin_ , ‘ttebayo!”

The jounin tilted his head. “Oh? Haven’t you got your own money?”

“Not enough,” I admitted. “Unless we skimp on groceries, but that’s a bad idea in winter, isn’t it? You know who we are, I’m sure Jiisan won’t mind seeing us.”

“Maa, why would I know that?” His eye curved with a hidden smile.

Naruto pointed at him and said, “Because —!” but then couldn’t follow it up. Down by my side, I made my hand into a little dog face, like I was going to do shadow puppets, and mouthed, _woof_.

The jounin’s eye-smile didn’t change, but I could feel the increase of tension in the air. I suddenly wondered if I screwed up. ANBU weren’t supposed to get ID’d by little kids. But he could suppress his chakra if he wanted to. Surely somebody this high-ranked wouldn’t forget I was a sensor. If I was sure it wouldn’t get us in trouble I would’ve said it out loud, but just in case, I wasn’t letting Naruto know. Naruto didn’t see what I did, he was in front of me, and there was no one else here… that… I could sense. Aw crap. There were probably ANBU hidden in the rafters or something, and now they knew I made him.

I pulled an apologetic face and shrugged. Not-Hound-right-now sighed like _what can ya do?_ and gestured for us to follow him. “Let’s not bother Hokage-sama while he’s in a meeting, hm? I’m at loose ends just now. You can owe me a favor.”

“You’re gonna get us a heater, Mask Jiji?”

The jounin cuffed Naruto lightly upside the head. “ _Hey_ , brat. I’m nineteen!”

“But your hair’s gray! That means you’re old!”

I could see there was going to be a very silly argument if I didn’t head it off. I trotted ahead down the stairs so I could pause on the landing and look up at them. “I dunno what kinda favor we could do for you, Jounin-san, we’re five. But I can cook, and Naruto’s good with plants?”

He stopped, scratching his mask and pretending to think, eye aimed vaguely upwards. “Maa… well… you can take care of my plant when I’m gone on a mission, how’s that?” He un-vagued himself and bent to push his face close to Naruto’s. “His name is Mister Ukki and he’s very important to me, understand?”

“Leave it to me, dattebayo!”

“Shake.” His big, pale hand enveloped Naruto’s tiny tan one, and they solemnly shook once.

I couldn’t help smiling. Now we had one friend our age, two teenage friends, and two elderly ones. Not bad for the village outcasts. We were definitely going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm pretty sure mr ukki was canonically a gift from naruto during his genin days, but eh, artistic license.


	4. New Friends and Lucky Cat

On days when it didn’t rain, the winter weather in Konoha was perfectly nice for playing outside. Fed up with being penned into our apartment, we launched out as if spring-loaded at the first hint of sunshine.

The other boys wouldn’t let us play ninja with them. Even the ones who weren’t actually hostile said their parents forbade it. This didn’t bother me much, since I figured we’d be in ninja school soon enough and we’d get our fill of it then, but it broke poor Naruto’s tender peppermint heart every time. We tried playing it by ourselves, but it didn’t work out very well. You could do the hide-and-seek part, sure, but apparently the real fun was in the alliances you made and betrayed on the way. Obviously I couldn’t just let Naruto be sad, so I invented new games to keep him entertained, using scraps of stories remembered from Henry’s life.

What I’m trying to do here is explain the way we first met our friend Sakura. Which is that we saw her and Ino being menaced by a pair of bigger girls at the park, and while I was still pondering the best way to de-escalate the situation, Naruto leapt in between them and shouted, “I am Moana of Motonui! You will board my boat, sail across the ocean, and return the Heart of Te Fiti!”

Never let it be said that I can’t spot a cue. I stomped up behind him, chiming in, “And I am Maui, shapeshifter, demigod of the wind and sea, and hero of men. Anyone who bothers our friends is gonna get a whupping.”

The next few seconds were a jumble of whapping noises and yelping as the big girls called our bluff, Naruto flailed like a pinwheel to surprisingly good effect, and I employed a principle I learned in the orphanage, which is that if you go for the eyes, they are going to flinch, and if they flinch and you don’t hesitate, you win. With bloody noses and threats to tell on us, the big girls ran. Naruto, slightly bloodied himself, turned to Ino and her pink-haired buddy, and I just knew he was going to either try to sound cool, or say something in character for our game of pretend that they didn’t know anything about. I grabbed him and scrubbed at his fattening lip with my cuff before he could blow our chance at making a new friend. 

“I can’t believe you let ‘em land one on you, nii-chan,” I grumbled.

“Katsuo!” Ino punched my arm. “We had it handled, you jerk! Who asked you to interfere?”

“We were playing explorers and got carried away, sorry,” I said, performing sheepishness with the chuckle and rubbing the back of my head and all. “I know you’re a clan heir and could’ve kicked their asses no problem.”

Ino rolled her eyes to show me she wasn’t impressed, but peace was restored. She introduced us to the pink-haired girl as “Katsuo and Naruto, the Uzumaki brothers,” which… sure, close enough. The pink girl shyly replied that her name was Sakura and (this almost inaudibly) she thought it was kind of cool what we did. Naruto just about exploded with joy.

“You wanna play explorers with us?” he asked, starry-eyed and bouncing.

Sakura looked to Ino, as if for permission. Ino hesitated. I wondered if she was thinking about parents forbidding kids to play with us. Ino’s dad was okay, but maybe Sakura’s parents would give her grief. I really wanted to be friends with Ino’s friend, though. I sweetened the pot: “We’re venturing into the mysterious Ocean of the Thousand Islands. Who knows what strange plants have evolved out there? I heard a rumor of a flower with red thorns that can make anyone fall asleep with a single touch —“

“Ha!” Ino cried. “I, the great naturalist Ino, will be the first to collect a sample! My faithful servant Sakura —“

I saw Sakura’s smile falter at ‘servant’, and interrupted, “Wait, Sakura the Great Navigator? That Sakura? You really managed to hire the Great Navigator Sakura, Ino?” 

Sakura’s chin lifted, and her smile came back. “Don’t worry, we won’t get lost with me on the job.” She did a dorky little thumbs-up and I about melted. What a cute kid! I resolved that we would protect her and feed her and give her fluffy things to hug forever and ever; from Naruto’s expression, he would 100% agree.

Naruto punched the air. “We’re gonna find Te Fiti’s Island for sure with your help, Sakura! Believe it!”

Well, we didn’t return the Heart of Te Fiti before the girls had to go home for dinner. But we collected a lot of weeds, bugs, and lizards, each of which Ino declared to be a new species never before documented. The jungle gym became Moana’s ship, which Naruto fearlessly sailed by pulling on the swing chains and pushing the roundabout back and forth like a rudder. Whenever things looked to be falling into a lull, I would spot a sea serpent, or dive for a pearl and end up battling a giant clam or something. Then we’d all join in and call out our attacks in raucous imaginary combat until we agreed the monster was defeated. After a little while Sakura forgot to be shy, and began consulting a pantomimed compass and testing the winds, calling out directions.

Sakura’s mother could’ve messed the whole thing up for us if she’d been a little earlier. But by the time she showed up to give Naruto a pinched look and gesture impatiently for Sakura’s hand as if pulling her from danger, Ino’s dad was already there and admiring our ‘scientific samples’. He greeted Haruno-san in a way that drew her into the conversation. Her lemon face relaxed little by little as we retold our adventures. Whatever it was that biased everyone against Naruto, it was overcome by seeing shy little Sakura proudly explain how she saved us all from a hurricane by reading the clouds.

Dinner was waiting, though, and they had to go. Hand in hand with their parents, they turned away. As was my habit when we saw this kind of scene, I took Naruto’s hand so he wouldn’t feel lonely. Then Ino turned back and yelled, “See you tomorrow!”

I could feel myself beaming just as wide as Naruto was. “See you!” we called back, so full of joy that as soon as the girls were out of sight around the corner we had to go work out the jitters by rolling on the grass and rubbing leaves on each other’s hair. When we flopped back to watch the sky turn gold and then purple, panting and laughing, I felt lighter than air. 

“Do you think we could make even more friends?” Naruto ventured.

“Definitely. But I’m pretty happy with just these ones for now. You think they’ll wanna play explorers again tomorrow, or something new?”

“I think it’ll be great either way.” His stomach growled loudly, and he laughed. “Hey nii-chan, can we get ramen?”

“Nuh-uh, we already did our ramen for the week. But that cheese needs using up and I think there’s some bacon left, you want mac ’n cheese?”

He sprang to his feet with a whoop. He yelled about mac ’n cheese all the way home. We got some dirty looks for it but we cared even less than usual. Sour old miz bakery on the corner, who always tried to sell us stale bread for full price, wasn’t having mac ’n cheese tonight!

Nobody in Konoha was except us, in fact, because it hadn’t been invented here. They didn’t have macaroni, or any short pasta at all really, but that had just inspired me to learn to make pasta by hand. It passed the rainy afternoons and saved money. I was neither big enough nor coordinated enough to stretch long noodles, but I could make farfalle until it was coming out our ears. You just cut a square and pinch it in the middle, easy peasy. Naruto helped, of course. His efforts were usually too uneven to dry properly over the space heater, so we’d eat them right away, floating in a hearty soup or tossed with oil and scallions. We’d almost forgotten what it was like to go hungry.

I didn’t let the joy of having Enough lull me into complacency, though. We were going to be badass shinobi when we grew up, we had to eat for strength! I made it my mission to get as much calcium into us as possible. Fortunately, neither of us was lactose-intolerant. 

Between all our projects and our new friends, that winter flew by in a blink. When the weather was dry, we played in the park with Ino and Sakura. We met Ino’s parentally-mandated future teammates Chouji and Shikamaru, too, though they usually didn’t want to play our energetic games for very long. Shika had chronic fatigue or something, and Chouji got out of breath easily. Still, we soon considered them friends as well.

Shika and Chouji got collected most days by Choji’s dad, an absolute mountain of a man with the laugh and the belly of a Buddha of Good Fortune. He didn’t flinch from Naruto for one moment. When he asked Choji loudly if his friends might like to come out to dinner, he made a point of smiling right at us so we’d know we were included. Soon we knew just about the whole Akimichi clan to say hi to, and if not all of them were as pleased to see Naruto as Chouji’s dad, that didn’t stop them from feeding us. Feeding people is how Akimichi interact with their community, it’s just their way. Naruto and I agreed that if we could pick a clan, we’d want to be Akimichi.

“You think maybe we could marry Choji when we grow up?” he sighed one evening in their family restaurant, as we digested another glorious free meal.

“I think only one of us could,” I replied thoughtfully. 

Choji’s face was turning as red as the bobble hat his auntie had plopped on his head when the rain started up again. Shikamaru scowled. “Don’t make fun of him,” he warned.

“We’re not, bro, I swear!” Naruto said. “Who wouldn’t wanna marry somebody who can cook this good? You’re gonna be a good cook, right, Choji?”

“Um, probably,” he chuckled, uncertain.

“I’m gonna learn to cook this good too, you know,” I pointed out.

“You can’t marry your brother, that’s gross!” Ino yelped.

“Not — ew, Ino, I know! I’m just saying —“

“You can’t marry Choji,” Shikamaru said in a tone of utter finality. “ _I’m_ going to marry him.”

Choji pulled his hat down over his eyes, making a very soft teakettle noise. Naruto and I d’awwed, Sakura giggled, and Ino immediately started teasing them both about wedding plans. 

A huge hand landed on my head. I smiled up at Chouza-san, whose chakra was like the warmth from an oven full of baking bread. He said, “Did I hear that you want to learn to cook, Katsuo-kun?”

“Yessir! I do all the cooking for me and nii-chan, I’m getting better all the time!”

“That’s impressive at your age. What would you say is your best dish?”

I had to think about that. My go-to was casseroles, what Henry had called ‘hot dish’, because they were simple and filling and got Naruto to eat vegetables. But they certainly weren’t impressive. I hadn’t yet succeeded fully at cake or bread; I could make it edible, even tasty, but it was always misshapen or uneven. “Yogurt,” I said finally.

That got his attention. He pulled up a chair and sat at the corner of the table, looming over us kids like a benevolent landslide. “That’s an unusual answer. You mean you make parfaits? Layer fruit and — no?” Because I was shaking my head.

“I make it from scratch. They like to give us nearly-expired milk. You know, cuz they don’t like us at the store —“ I was surprised to see him scowl at this, as if he didn’t know. Well, there wasn’t much reason for adults to pay attention to our shopping experiences, after all. “It’s still fine, if we drink it right away, but who wants to chug the whole carton on grocery day and then not have any all week, right? So I mix in a little yogurt from the last batch and pour it in jars, and we set it the right distance from the heater to incubate. We got a little thermometer and everything.” I paused in case he wanted to interrupt, but he gestured for me to go on. I noticed the other conversations had faltered. Everyone was looking at me now. If I were the kind of person that sort of thing bothered, though, I wouldn’t have been there in the first place, would I? “Then when it’s thickened up, I mix in flavors. Like strawberry jam, or chocolate syrup and chopped nuts. Or herbs and garlic for a marinade, chicken is _so_ good like that. Anyway, then it keeps in the fridge for like two weeks.” I crossed my arms and glared around the table. “Don’t leak this to the mean grocery lady or I’ll take a terrible revenge. She’d probably just refuse to let us have any milk at all.”

Chouza made a rumbly sound in his throat that was more hmm than growl, but still sorta made the hair stand up at the back of my neck. I wondered if he was going to go white-knight us to the grocer. That sounded like something that would come back to bite us when he wasn’t looking. But he relaxed and smiled again. “I’d love to sample your yogurt. Would you bring a few different flavors around next time you make it?”

That sounded like something I could leverage for cooking lessons. “Sure! Any requests?”

“Hmmm… lemon. My favorite flavor is lemon.”

“Ooh.” The acidity would make that a little tricky, but I was up for the challenge. “I’ll see what I can do!”

As we walked home that night, too full to run despite the rain, Naruto said, “Why d’you think Chouza-san wants our yogurt?”

“I think he wants to see if I’m any good at it. I’m gonna ask for cooking lessons.”

“You could be a ninja chef, ‘ttebayo!”

I laughed. “Nah, I just like to eat good food. I’m gonna be a combat engineer like my dad.” Or an intelligence officer like my mom, but I already knew enough to figure that’s not the kind of dream you go blurting out loud.

“I wish I asked Hat Jiisan more about my folks when I had the chance. Maybe my dad was a good cook too, like Chouji’s dad!”

“I wonder if Kakashi-san knows about them. He’s old enough, right? Like he was probably in the Academy when your folks were doing badass jounin stuff, I bet he heard about them. We should bug him about it next time he brings his poor old plant over.” Naruto had done plant-sitting duty twice so far, and both times it was more of a rescue than anything else. Kakashi, when he wasn’t being Dog, was a real lazybutt. I felt bad for Mister Ukki.

A couple weeks later, we were invited to the Akimichi restaurant again. This time we’d all been playing in the Yamanaka greenhouses, because a promising morning had clouded over and now it was pissing down outside. Sakura, ever the sweetheart, offered us her cute umbrella with the ducks on it for our run home to collect the promised yogurt. This was fine for the first leg of the trip, but when we emerged from our apartment with our string bag full of jars, we were met by a crack of thunder and a wall of water that I was afraid would knock us right off the stairs.

“They’ll totally understand if we’re late,” Naruto said.

I thought about it. But when I compared the leftovers in our fridge to the feast that awaited us beyond that deluge, I couldn’t bear to give up. “Ha! Just a little water,” I said bravely, and angled the umbrella against the wind.

It was nothing but pure chance that I spotted the kitten struggling in the foaming gutter. The rain was so thick, if we’d crossed the street even a few steps earlier or later, we would never have seen it. The thunder and the hammering rain drowned out any cries it made. Even practically stepping over it as we were, we could easily have mistaken the sodden gray thing for a wad of newspaper. I just happened look the right direction, at the right moment, to see its little pink mouth open in what would probably have been its final meow. As I shoved the bag of jars into Naruto’s hands, the kitten’s weak struggles ceased, and it sank beneath the muddy ripples.

I glanced downstream. I saw that the ever-thickening flood was heading down a storm drain, the opening of which was plenty big enough to admit a limp kitten.

With a fencer’s lunge, I thumped Sakura’s duck umbrella down in the gutter like a ladle under a faucet. It filled with swirling trash and leaves and one drowning animal; as soon as I saw a little flailing paw I tilted the umbrella up to be a bowl. My sweater cuff got soaked as I dredged the poor creature out. No sooner did I have it in hand than the weight of the water broke the umbrella, turning it half inside out, sending everything right down the storm drain.

Only then did I notice I was muttering “oh my god, oh my god” under my breath, overwhelmed by the close call. The kitten lay still in my hands. Not sure what to do, I turned it upside down and patted its side, but nothing happened. Naruto, also muttering off an adrenaline rush, cupped his hands around mine, so we were sheltering the cat together from the rain. “Is it dead?” he asked, voice cracking.

“It was alive and swimming just a second ago, it can’t be dead,” I said, more hope than certainty. “It just… needs to get warm, that’s all.” I opened my raincoat and stuffed the kitten up the front of my sweater. Icy wet fur against my bare skin made me flinch, but I pressed it gently against my belly and willed it to be alive, to take my body heat, to be strong. “Come on, little guy, you’re a golden lucky cat, you can be lucky for one more minute, come on…”

Naruto cupped his hands around his mouth, leaned down toward my stomach, and stage-whispered, “ _Ganbatte!_ ”

Almost as if the kitten heard us, I felt a twitch, a struggle, and a tiny spit-up. Naruto cheered; I heaved a sigh of relief. “Good job,” I told my wriggling sweater.

Our arrival at the restaurant was a moment of great drama. Sakura saw her broken umbrella and started to cry, which made Ino start scolding us. Chouji was asking if we were all right, Shikamaru was making some snide comment about how we’d managed to get so wet, Chouza was asking about the yogurt we’d brought, Chouji’s mom was coming at us with towels fussing about getting us warm… and then Naruto thrust the dripping flop of duckies toward Sakura and shouted, “It sacrificed its life to save a baby kitty, Sakura-chan! Your umbrella died a hero!”

I knew what to do with the moment of silence that brought us. I untucked my sweater and produced the now slightly drier kitten, which sneezed.


	5. Thunder Beast

Chouza-san brought in a civilian vet. Naruto and I weren’t about to contradict him, obviously, but we didn’t need to say anything out loud to know we wanted to be sitting together in the restaurant kitchen, surrounded by Nice Akimichi Adults, with our backs to a wall, when the civilian arrived. Of course someone without powers wasn’t going to slap Naruto or try to steal his stuff right in front of a bunch of shinobi, but we still just… felt better in a more defensible position, that’s all. 

Chouji’s mom (whose name I still hadn’t caught, everyone just called her kaachan) stayed with us too. We would’ve felt even safer if Chouza stayed, but he was out wrangling the other kids, who had been whipped into a frenzy of excitement by the Kitten Reveal and would no doubt spill into the kitchen and get underfoot if he didn’t watch them. The restaurant was still open, after all, and while their customers were used to a crowd of shinobi kids occupying the corner booth, they wouldn’t have appreciated the cooks being distracted by babysitting. 

It was probably bad form to do a vet exam in a restaurant kitchen, but if there was such a thing as ninja OSHA, nobody was running off to tell them about it.

When the vet arrived, we discovered we needn’t have worried. The elderly man only had eyes for the kitten. “Can you warm up some towels, please, Akimichi-san, thank you,” he said absently as he took the little guy from me and cradled him in his long, bony hands. “You’ve had quite a day, haven’t you?” he murmured. He held the kitten and stroked his ears and cheeks soothingly until a cook laid a towel fresh from the dryer on the prep table that had been cleared for us.

Naruto and I hovered just short of gripping the edge of the table. “His name is Raiju,” I declared, unable to keep from testing the waters by drawing attention to myself.

The vet didn’t look up from his gentle examination. “Oh? Because you found him in a storm, eh? Good choice, good choice. Yes, he’s a he… it can be hard to tell when they’re this young, you have to look for the little lumps here. You’ll want to have him fixed when he’s old enough, or else he’ll spray, but not until he’s six months or so. How old are you now, Raiju?” With this, he carefully pried the kitten’s mouth open. “I see incisors, I see canines… no premolars yet. I’d say four weeks.”

Naruto lost his private battle against blurting things out loud, and as usual when he’d been struggling, his volume control was a casualty. “But will he be _okay_?” he shouted.

The vet finally looked at us. His wire-frame glasses were a little fogged from coming out of the rain into the warmth of the kitchen; his eyes behind them were gray and kind. There was a blink when he focused on Naruto, maybe recognition, maybe surprise, but that was all. His voice was still the same calm murmur. “Oh yes, he’s going to be fine. Kittens get chilled very easily, but you did a good job getting him warm and dry again. I can’t feel any injuries. Ears look fine, but let’s swab them anyway, I’m sure some water got into them… yes, I know, it doesn’t feel nice, but you don’t want mud in there, do you? Good boy, good boy, now the part you’re really going to hate, I have to take your temperature. I know, it’s awful, isn’t it? No, I wouldn’t like it either. Almost done. There you go, all finished.” He studied the thermometer, then wrapped it in a tissue and put it in his bag as if it hadn’t been up a cat’s butt. “He could stand to be warmer, but I think he should be able to eat something.”

“Does he need milk?” Emboldened by the old man’s kindness, Naruto crowded in to pet Raiju around the vet’s gently restraining hands. “Can he have normal milk, or do we have to get cat milk? I don’t know where to get cat milk. Nii-chan, where would we get cat milk?”

“Beats me, but if he’s got teeth he’s weaned, right? So… wet food?”

“Wet food mashed in a little formula, I think,” the vet mused. “I brought some of both. Be prepared for anything, eh? Just as important for a veterinarian as a shinobi!”

I doubted that, since he was probably not going to have to cut down a tree or catch his own food in the course of his daily rounds, but for once I managed to sit on my baby brain and not say what I was thinking. This guy was probably the nicest civilian we’d ever met. He even answered Naruto’s questions directly instead of addressing the answers to me. He didn’t look at Naruto’s eyes, which suggested he’d heard those rumors that whatever made Naruto persona non grata could _get you_ via eye contact like a genjutsu or something, but since Naruto was looking exclusively at the kitten he didn’t notice. No harm done.

After he’d taught us how to make a smelly pink gruel for Raiju to eat off our fingers — those tiny teeth were really sharp! — and given us advice and pamphlets about caring for our new friend, he turned to Chouji’s mom to talk about the bill while he packed up. He knew we didn’t have money for this. It was really kind of him to make sure we didn’t have a moment to worry about it. Naruto shouted his thanks, and I bowed mine. He threw us an absent smile in return.

Raiju, dozing in a warm towel with a full belly, barely opened his eyes when we brought him out to properly meet our friends. I had to remind Ino to be gentle, and Naruto had to reassure Sakura that it was ok to touch, but in the end everyone got to pet him. The general consensus was that he was the cutest and softest thing in the world, and all four of our friends were going to pester their own parents for a kitten right away. Naruto proposed that we form a cat club. I didn’t think their folks were going to be alongside that, but I didn’t pop his bubble. No harm in daydreaming. Raiju peed on his towel before we were done with our own meal. A replacement was provided without any fuss. 

A feeling was seeping up in me, up from the depths of my memory or Henry’s, that it took me a long time to identify. It was a good feeling, so I was surprised to realize, when Sakura made an alarmed face and reached for my hand, that I’d begun crying.

“What’s wrong, Katsuo-kun?” Chouza rumbled.

I shook my head, unable to explain. “It’s a good day,” was all I could say.

He smiled. He wrapped his huge arm around my shoulder and gave me a gentle squeeze. “It is, isn’t it?”

“Can I have a hug too?” Naruto ventured. Of course he could, Chouza had hugs enough for everyone. There was a general rush to pile on the big man and get a cuddle, which Shikamaru wasn’t interested in, but Ino only _pretended_ to be too cool for. When Chouza scooped her into the hug pile anyway, she giggled. I wiped my eyes with my still-damp sweater sleeve and laughed at the spectacle of us all. The urge to cry was gone as mysteriously as it had arrived.

After a dessert of warm zenzai with toasted mochi, all us kids were ushered home by adults holding their big umbrellas over us. They were not, Akimichi-kaachan told us firmly, going to risk one of us getting washed away like Raiju was! Naruto and I had exchanged our jars of yogurt for boxed leftovers (far more than was actually left over!) and the cans of powdered kitten formula and wet food. Our string bag was so heavy we had to take turns carrying it. The final grace note of the day: we’d forgotten to turn out our lights when we left, so our windows were glowing warmly to welcome us home.

I gave Raiju a little more of his stinky porridge while Naruto fixed up a litter tray according to the vet’s instructions. We were unable to interest the little guy in using it, though. He was tired, and we were too. We decided to just turn in and if kitten pee happened we’d deal with it later.

There was no question of going to our separate beds tonight. We both had to sleep with the kitten. It was obvious. We lay on the bottom bunk like adoring parentheses around the ball of gray fluff tucked between our pillows.

Naruto was out in moments. I took a little longer to drift off, savoring the feeling of the day, this good feeling, this warmth. The emotion I’d cried over earlier crept back to me. This time, in the dark and the quiet, I recognized it. It was something I’d never experienced in this life, but Henry had known it: the warm safety in the heart of a family. Being surrounded by adults I knew wouldn’t hurt me, being sheltered and fed, being _taken care of_ , and knowing that I didn’t have to do anything in that moment but exist. For just a few hours there, under Chouza’s protection, I’d felt the way I supposed kids with loving parents felt all the time. 

It was only a borrowed feeling. We couldn’t count on it; the Akimichi weren’t our family, no matter how kind they were to a couple of orphans their youngest had befriended. But it was still good.

Maybe I could find a way to be that shelter for Naruto. We _were_ a family, after all, and I figured it counted even more since we’d decided it instead of it just happening by chance. I liked when Ino called us ‘the Uzumaki brothers’. We were only small and still weak, but we’d get stronger. We’d protect each other better and better with time. For now, young as we were, I could still make sure Naruto knew he’d never be alone and he’d never be hungry. I’d been doing pretty good for a five-year-old, but I could do better. Besides, there were three of us now. I patted Raiju’s tiny head, and Naruto’s slightly less tiny head, and fell asleep planning what to make for breakfast.

.

Raiju was the reason our friends started hanging out at our apartment. 

He needed to be fed every four hours, and couldn’t be outside when it was wet, which really cut into our going-out-to-play time. Or mine, anyway. Naruto just couldn’t stand to stay in when it was nice out. He was fond of Raiju, and helped when I asked, but I was the one whose world had sort of naturally realigned around kitten duty. Within a few days it was clear that Raiju was _my_ cat more than he was _our_ cat. He’d play with Naruto and cuddle him, but it was me he came to when he was hungry, or scared, or had attacked the flypaper and couldn’t get it off his paw.

The weather was lovely after that storm. It felt like spring would arrive any minute. Naruto went out to get muddy with our friends as long as it held. I went out only long enough to show everyone that Raiju was doing fine, explain about the feeding schedule, and let him explore the grass a little. Then I went home to work on my projects and take care of the little guy, while Naruto stayed out playing.

It was good for Naruto, I guessed, to spend some social time without me. Good for me to have alone time, too. Still, I was looking forward to when Raiju could walk on a harness and had enough teeth to snack on dry food when I wasn’t around.

Naruto would’ve been desperately bored staying home so much, but I had plenty to keep busy with. I had my cooking projects, I had my reading — I was at the point where learning one kanji a day was no longer a challenge, and now just kept a dictionary beside me while I chugged through genin-level textbooks — and I had a brand new project, which was part of my fresh drive to make safe-warm-home a feeling my precious adopted brother could get used to. With Raiju in the kangaroo pocket of the hoodie I was already outgrowing, and all our saved-up funds in a coin purse pinned to the _inside_ of my pants — because we hadn’t yet met a civilian gross enough to try to steal it from there — I hit the thrift store. 

(For some reason, going there always got me singing under my breath, something about _I’m wearing your grandfather’s clothes, I look amazing_ , for which I absolutely blamed Henry.)

Now, the problem with the thrift store was that Konoha just… wasn’t that big. Maybe 20,000 people. About half of those were either shinobi (who wore uniforms) or members of clans (which shared hand-me-downs among cousins and nighbors rather than donating them). On top of that, what kids’ clothes did get donated usually went to the orphanage. I wasn’t about to march in there and rifle through the clothes pile, not when I had a little money and the option of never seeing Tsubasa-okaasan again.

Henry had been the type of guy who picks up hobbies like they’re contagious. He’d learned the rudiments of dozens of crafts. When he got to the point of basic competence, he’d lose interest and start something new. There were themes, though, and textiles were perhaps the strongest trend. I thought that was a little odd, for someone whose passion in life was expressed in chemistry labs and electronics workshops, but I guess the heart wants what the heart wants. What Henry’s heart had wanted, with great frequency, was to make warm squishy crafts out of yarn and cotton. _Nerdy_ crafts. There were math quilts. (Why were math quilts even a thing?) My memory was much too vague to pick up where he’d left off, but I did have a broad sense of how fabric items went together. I felt certain I could work the rest out as I went.

All this is just a long-winded way of explaining why I was at the kitchen table, surrounded by bags of too-big clothes, trying to extract Raiju from the innards of a disassembled sewing machine, when Naruto and the girls burst in demanding to play with the kitty.

“Please, take him!” I cried, dumping him into Sakura’s arms. “He’s shedding in the machinery!” She plopped down on the floor to tease him with a twistie-tie, and I began picking cat hair out of the sewing machine parts.

“Nii-chan, what did you do?” Naruto demanded.

“Spent all our money!” I said cheerfully.

“On _what_?” He dove into one of the bags. “Dresses? _Katsuo_!”

“I got this sewing machine for like 80 ryou because it doesn’t work, but I can totally fix it.”

He threw his arms in the air. “I don’t get it!”

“Trust me. This is cool.”

“I believe you but I still don’t get it!”

Ino plopped down opposite me. “What are you gonna do, open a tailor shop?”

I laughed. “Nothing so ambitious. I’m just going to make stuff we need. That bag over there —“ I leaned back to catch Naruto’s eye and point. “That one. Has the clothes that should almost fit us. I figure I can alter them. The rest is — ok so apparently? When the thrift store can’t sell something as clothes cuz it’s ripped or stained or whatever? Or just so ugly nobody buys it, I guess? They sell it as rag for five ryou a kilo!”

He looked from the bulging bags to me and back, bewildered. “What are we gonna do with a million kilos of rags?”

I ticked them off on my fingers: “We need dish towels. We need at least one cat bed. We need another bathroom rug so we don’t have a repeat of the soap skating incident every laundry day. We need an entry rug because we keep tracking in mud. We need —“

“Okay, okay! It’s a good idea, okay. Just. _All_ our money?”

“We have 68 ryou left until the end of the month. It’s _fine_ , nii-chan, with Chouji’s dad feeding us so much we were ahead of the game, and I checked that we have enough food to last us. All we need to buy before our next allowance comes is milk and maybe more cat food if Raiju starts turning his nose up at the kitten formula.”

Naruto considered this for a few more seconds, then let go of all his tension with a shrug. “Okay,” he said, and that was that. He trusted me to have things well in hand. He plopped down next to Sakura, and I smiled soppily into my work, feeling like the best big brother in the world.

I should’ve noticed that Ino was suspiciously quiet. She had her chin in her hands and was watching me like… well, I supposed like her dad must look at the people he brain-whammied for a living. Like I was a puzzle and she was going to take me apart just like I’d taken apart the sewing machine. After a minute of this I raised one eyebrow at her. Practicing that in the mirror had definitely been worth it; she cracked immediately.

“You have an allowance? You do your own shopping? You have to _make your own clothes_? Who takes _care_ of you? Naruto said you live all alone but I thought he was telling fibs! What if you get sick!? What if you wake up in the middle of the night and you had a bad dream and you need to get somebody to tell you it was only a dream?!?” She was waving her arms around by the end of this, and I had to grab a little plastic gear as she knocked it off the table.

Blinking at it, at its tiny gray plastic teeth, I weathered the realization that our friends… didn’t know how we lived. Even though we hadn’t kept it a secret, they genuinely did not have the context to make sense of what we’d told them. “Well, we’ve got a bunk bed,” I explained.

“What does _that_ mean, you’ve got a bunk bed? I didn’t _ask_ if you’ve got a bunk bed, I —“

“If I have a bad dream, nii-chan’s right there. And vice-versa.”

She stared, open-mouthed.

“We don’t… _have_ to make our own clothes,” I explained. “Um. Hat-jiisan — I mean, Hokage-sama — bought us these. But we’re outgrowing them.”

“The Hokage did?” Sakura put in, looking up at me in puzzlement. “Is he your grandpa or something?”

“No, uh, he just. I guess he knew our parents?” Naruto tried. Then he looked at me too, because he didn’t understand why the Hokage had done this for us either.

“We were having a hard time in the orphanage. You probably noticed how grownups don’t like Naruto for some reason. Well… we were… having a hard time in the orphanage,” I repeated lamely, and shrugged.

“Yeah, I _did_ notice that,” Ino said, turquoise eyes narrowing. “Dad wouldn’t tell me why.”

“ _Nobody_ will tell us why,” Naruto said mournfully. As if to comfort him, Raiju picked up the twistie tie and trotted over to drop it on Naruto’s knee. “Thanks, Raiju,” he sighed.

Sakura ran a finger down Raiju’s spine to the tip of his little pencil tail. “What a good kitty you are. You take good care of your people, don’t you?”

“Ih!” said Raiju.

“He’s a good boy,” I agreed. “A good and fluffy boy both physically and spiritually. Even his chakra signature is good and fluffy.”

“Umm…” Ino tilted her head at me. “Katsuo, normal animals don’t have chakra signatures.”

There was a long silence, punctuated only by one tiny purr. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's no good information on konoha's population, but it looks to be a similar size and density to the town i live in, so i gave it the same population. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ fanfic!
> 
> i made a post here with some aerial shots of the town and also a wee raiju to help you visualize :3
> 
> https://jumpingjacktrash.tumblr.com/post/642159963402338304/a-post-with-some-explanatory-pictures-for-me-to


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